China adopts new tech to protect intellectual property

Copyright Monitoring Center (CMC) under the Copyright Society of China offers registration services and monitoring of online and offline infringements for participating rights’ holders and government agencies.

CMC’s deputy director Wu Guanyong says they have adopted new technology to identify cases of rights infringement. The CMC was built on a copyright big data platform which has adopted a searching technology designed for audio, video, pictures, and articles. It can search not only key words but also audio and video by comparing and identifying frames to find pirated activities.

According to the World Intellectual Property Organization, China has become the largest source of patent applications, trademarks and industrial designs. The number of Chinese international patent applications exceeded 43,000 last year, up 44.7 percent. And China has handled over 80,000 rights infringement cases so far, with more than two million pirated publications seized in the first quarter this year, according to the National Copyright Administration.

But challenges remain both at home and abroad.

As the country’s copyright administration has been conducting an annual protection campaign for five years, an increasing number of small websites that live on piracy have moved their servers to foreign countries to avoid monitoring.

In August, of the 1,000 small and medium-sized websites which conducted rights infringements, more than 40 percent were registered as overseas companies.

Wu says the intellectual property protection environment has remarkably changed in China, both from a legal perspective and in terms of technological application. He also calls for better international cooperation with overseas monitoring agencies in the area so as to create an inclusive and open environment for intellectual property protection.